[dave the rave]

Yesterday a clients gave me a card that had been put through the letter box . The house is a 5 bed with a conservatory and the quote was for £7 ( I think they must be desperate or just starting out ). I am up in West Yorkshire .

[Dave Willis]

I'd do that for£3 and the conservatory roof for free.

[Ste b]

I'd do that for£3 and the conservatory roof for free.

Someone will be along soon to tell you thats to expensive and your a ripoff

[nathankaye]

Ive sold my house and got 12 vans n go. Bored of watching stuff on my 50"tv  so I need the work to pay for my leaflet dropping. So ill nick your work for 6 quid instead.   

[slap bash]

I see this type of mistake daily. Why, go into a business without doing some homework. All they do is further confuse the paying public. Add to the believe we are all just a bounce of worthless fools. As least find out what the going rate is in your area. Every time I see a new guy around I wait for the cut prices and there will be a bit of turmoil and they will not be around too long and then disappear off  the face of the patch. 

[SeanK]

I see this type of mistake daily. Why, go into a business without doing some homework. All they do is further confuse the paying public. Add to the believe we are all just a bounce of worthless fools. As least find out what the going rate is in your area. Every time I see a new guy around I wait for the cut prices and there will be a bit of turmoil and they will not be around too long and then disappear off  the face of the patch.

You cant blame newbies for thinking undercutting is the way to go as its how a lot of other business do it, that and reading nonsense on forums about how quick wfp is.
I would say the guy thinks he could do 3 or 4 of those properties an hour with ease.
We all had to start somewhere and how long he will be around will depend on how quickly he learns that his prices are just too
low to keep going and does something about it.

[NWH]

If they dropped you because of it I wouldn't worry they weren't worth having as a custie in he first place.

[dave the rave]

No did not lose the client , but her respond was if he can do the Windows for that price was he's either desperate for work or up to no good .

[mgba_78]

Over the years we have come across this and variations of it.

We had a company blind pricing houses in a very affluent area where we have a few hundred customers.  We had this job at £23 and have been doing it for years for them and even before them the original customer for maybe a further 5 years.
Its a 5 bed house with a nice large single storey extension nice lot of windows  on the rear with 6 skylites. IT takes  no more than 20 minutes to do.
The card put through the door was for £12!!  Obviously the guys hadnt seen the rear and the customer queried our price, i just put it to them that if you pay £12 you'll get £12 worth of cleaning, feel free to contact them if you like i said but i bet once theyve seen the rear it wont be £12!! 

And another just round the corner, nice big bungalow £21, again been going years and years there, we got underpriced by a few quid so customer rang thanked us for our service throughout the years and canned us. 
A few months later and a rather apologetic phone call asking us to return to clean the windows, upon asking why, the other guys broke the gate climbing over and once charged for the rears even though it wasnt done!! 
They couldnt kiss our ass enough, wife told hubby off as it was his decison to save a few quid!!!   LOL 

I think most people know if they want a decent job doing its worth paying for it

[Marc Stock]

My minimum price here is £25.

Gotta be able to fill up the Ferrari. Times are hard.

[8weekly]

Over the years we have come across this and variations of it.

We had a company blind pricing houses in a very affluent area where we have a few hundred customers.  We had this job at £23 and have been doing it for years for them and even before them the original customer for maybe a further 5 years.
Its a 5 bed house with a nice large single storey extension nice lot of windows  on the rear with 6 skylites. IT takes  no more than 20 minutes to do.
The card put through the door was for £12!!  Obviously the guys hadnt seen the rear and the customer queried our price, i just put it to them that if you pay £12 you'll get £12 worth of cleaning, feel free to contact them if you like i said but i bet once theyve seen the rear it wont be £12!! 

And another just round the corner, nice big bungalow £21, again been going years and years there, we got underpriced by a few quid so customer rang thanked us for our service throughout the years and canned us. 
A few months later and a rather apologetic phone call asking us to return to clean the windows, upon asking why, the other guys broke the gate climbing over and once charged for the rears even though it wasnt done!! 
They couldnt kiss our ass enough, wife told hubby off as it was his decison to save a few quid!!!   LOL 

I think most people know if they want a decent job doing its worth paying for it

Another perspective: Wc turned up to clean the windows, the owner didn't leave the gate unlocked so the wc climbed the gate causing a splinter and pee'd the custie off. Custie says in future, don't climb gate so wc leaves bill for the full amount when gate next locked.

[dazmond]

we ve all had it over the years.a guy was trying to get a few of my customers and went in with a price of £8 for 4 bedders(no connys).i charge £16.he didnt get any though!

another time a guy said he d clean one of my customers windows for £12(5 bedder with large conny)i charge £30.he also didnt get the job.

i did lose a £10 job about a year ago as the guy in question said he d clean it for £7.id had the customer for 10+ years too!oh well he s trad  and has to climb on 2 sloping roofs to get the job done.

[AuRavelling79]

I'd do that for£3 and the conservatory roof for free.

Someone will be along soon to tell you thats to expensive and your a ripoff

That's too expensive and you're a rip off.

[Spruce]

Yesterday a clients gave me a card that had been put through the letter box . The house is a 5 bed with a conservatory and the quote was for £7 ( I think they must be desperate or just starting out ). I am up in West Yorkshire .

We've had that often.

It will be a blanket price to catch people's interest and enquire. They will then add extra for the conservatory saying that price was for the house only.

I see this type of mistake daily. Why, go into a business without doing some homework. All they do is further confuse the paying public. Add to the believe we are all just a bounce of worthless fools. As least find out what the going rate is in your area. Every time I see a new guy around I wait for the cut prices and there will be a bit of turmoil and they will not be around too long and then disappear off  the face of the patch.

You cant blame newbies for thinking undercutting is the way to go as its how a lot of other business do it, that and reading nonsense on forums about how quick wfp is.
I would say the guy thinks he could do 3 or 4 of those properties an hour with ease.
We all had to start somewhere and how long he will be around will depend on how quickly he learns that his prices are just too
low to keep going and does something about it.

We had the local job center telling unemployed to clean windows. The job center told them to quote any stupid price for a bungalow as working window cleaners can afford to loose a few customers. So do a bunaglow for £2.00. If it takes you an hour, so what, you only need 8 houses a day and 16 houses a week. Do them every 2 weeks and all you need is 32 bungalows at £2.00 each. 

The government will top up their earnings to a living wage - family credit, etc.  The incentive is that if they clean a bungalow in 30 minutes they only have to work one day a week but still continue claiming 16 hours.

[NBwcs]

"We had a company blind pricing houses in a very affluent area where we have a few hundred customers.  We had this job at £23 and have been doing it for years for them and even before them the original customer for maybe a further 5 years.
Its a 5 bed house with a nice large single storey extension nice lot of windows  on the rear with 6 skylites. IT takes  no more than 20 minutes to do.
The card put through the door was for £12!!  Obviously the guys hadnt seen the rear and the customer queried our price, i just put it to them that if you pay £12 you'll get £12 worth of cleaning, feel free to contact them if you like i said but i bet once theyve seen the rear it wont be £12!!  "

is that 20mins for 1 man? 

[mgba_78]

Another perspective: Wc turned up to clean the windows, the owner didn't leave the gate unlocked so the wc climbed the gate causing a splinter and pee'd the custie off. Custie says in future, don't climb gate so wc leaves bill for the full amount when gate next locked.

No, they snapped a portion off the gate top.   They may of said that, it wasnt mentioned.   
And yes they may have done this and charged full amount but if gate was locked its 2 minutes to get ladder off and split it either side of gate, no need to touch or climb gate.
 

[mgba_78]

is that 20mins for 1 man?

Yeah maybe a little more if gate is locked as mentioned above  :-) 

[NBwcs]

is that 20mins for 1 man?

Yeah maybe a little more if gate is locked as mentioned above  :-)

Tbh mate, at £36ph he probably wouldnt regret charging £12. i appreciate your in the south and all that but thats still not an hourly rate to be sniffed at.

[mgba_78]

Tbh mate, at £36ph he probably wouldnt regret charging £12. i appreciate your in the south and all that but thats still not an hourly rate to be sniffed at.

Actually moved 10 years ago to sunny Nottinghamshire  LOL not updated my profile   :-)
True, but why under price an area that can happily pay more.
It wouldnt be £36 an hour anyway,  unless he did next door  or the 3 over the road, of which we do! 
Typically a £12 job here is a large 3 bed semi/detached or small 4 bed detached. which can take 10 mins to do.
Thats the beauty of WFP though no job is really underpriced as its far easier to do than off a ladder where underpriced jobs even by a few quid hurt!!

[Smurf]

No such thing in my book as the lowest price.  If they don't like the price I give then they have the choice to find someone cheaper or not as it don't bother me either way.